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Scouting Report 2007
We asked 10 people who explore for a living to reveal the places they've recently "discovered"--in other words, the best places you've never heard of (and, frankly, neither had we). Go now, before the rest of the world catches up.
Budget TravelTuesday, Aug 21, 2007, 12:00 AMBudget Travel LLC, 2016

THE BEST PLACES YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF

Scouting Report 2007

We asked 10 people who explore for a living to reveal the places they've recently "discovered"--in other words, the best places you've never heard of (and, frankly, neither had we). Go now, before the rest of the world catches up.

As president and CEO of Design Hotels, Claus Sendlinger travels about every other week--in other words, half the year. When asked the last four places he had been, he had to take a minute to try and remember (he recalled, in no particular order, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Vienna, and Rome). One place that Sendlinger won't soon forget was on the Pacific Coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

"For Christmas, my wife and I went to Mexico for three weeks--the longest vacation I've taken since I left school!" says Sendlinger. After exploring the inland part of Oaxaca, they headed to the beach. "We did an area that's east of Puerto Escondido and west of Huatulco," he says. "It's right in between, where the mountains come down and reach the ocean. There are four little beaches, some with little hippie villages named after them: Mazunte, Zipolite, San Agustinillo, and La Boquilla." They stayed at Hotel Bahía de la Luna, just outside the town of Puerto Ángel. It has 11 bungalows right on the white-sand beach of La Boquilla.

His friends Carlos Couturier Gaya and Moisés Micha, who own the Habita and Condesa DF hotels in Mexico City and the Básico in Playa del Carmen, had tipped him off about Bahía de la Luna. "They know Mexico so well, so I explained what I was looking for and they told us to rent a car in Puerto Escondido and drive."

Sendlinger found it to be an incredibly relaxed (and relaxing) place--not just the hotel, but the entire coastal region--and he spent most of his time reading on the beach. "Early in the trip," he says, "I accidentally left my flip-flops at a bar, and I never even bothered to replace them."

How to get there: Hotel Bahía de la Luna, 011-52/958-589-5020, bahiadelaluna.com, from $60.